United States President Barack Obama sat down for two hours, Tuesday, with the top brass of Silicon Valley firms to discuss pressing issues such as the spying program of the National Security Agency and the problematic HealthCare.gov website.
Obama met with executives such as Eric Schmidt of Google, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple, Dick Costolo of Twitter, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Brad Smith of Microsoft, and Erika Rottenberg of LinkedIn, among others, at the Roosevelt Room of The White House.
The meeting came a week after a coalition of tech giants rolled out an online campaign calling for immediate changes to the surveillance program of governments across the globe, particularly the U.S. Obama, joined by top government officials, and the tech leaders met for two hours. The technology firms presented their thoughts and concerns to the president with regard to the data siphoning activities of the NSA and said they want the government to allow them to disclose to their users when the government requests for information.
The call of the tech companies to restrain snooping activities was made stronger by a district court ruling Monday that somehow serves as a big blow to the spying activities of the government. Judge Richard Leon ruled that the NSA's bulk collection of phone records is unconstitutional.
"We appreciated the opportunity to share directly with the president our principles on government surveillance that we released last week and we urge him to move aggressively on reform," the Silicon Valley executives said in a joint statement.
"... the group discussed the national security and economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures. This was an opportunity for the President to hear from CEOs directly as we near completion of our review of signals intelligence programs, building on the feedback we've received from the private sector in recent weeks and months. The President made clear his belief in an open, free, and innovative internet and listened to the group's concerns and recommendations, and made clear that we will consider their input as well as the input of other outside stakeholders as we finalize our review of signals intelligence programs," a press statement from The White House read.
The White House also disclosed that starting Wednesday, Microsoft's former head of Office, Kurt Delbene, will be senior advisor to help improve the HealthCare.gov website and the Health Insurance Marketplace.
